Slashdot Mirror
Followup: Anti-Global Warming Story Itself Flawed
The Bad Astronomer writes "As posted earlier on Slashdot, a Forbes Op/Ed claims there is a 'gaping hole in global warming' theories, based on a recent paper. However, both the Forbes article and the paper on which it's based are themselves seriously flawed. The paper has been excoriated by climate scientists, saying the model used is 'unrealistic' and 'incorrect,' and the author has a track record of using bad models to make incorrect conclusions."
...have much of a better track record? You have fudged data from the last century or so and think you've got a model that shows anything whatsoever? Sorry, not buying it any better than you're buying this guy's statements.
This is not to say AGW proponents are right or wrong- just that they haven't the foggiest as they've not honestly done any science with the subject yet. To say they do have a picture is being dishonest at best- they don't have enough of a sample set for starters...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Because anything that doesn't fall lock step into the religion that says we are on a path to human extinction within this century unless we start taxing corporations heavily, is obviously seriously flawed. If only environmental science had the same rigorous processes as the rest of the sciences...
What else did you expect them to say?
You know, whether or not the original article is BS, why is the very first point that the rebuttal piece linked above makes the fact that the original article uses the word 'alarmist' umpteen times? This is like counting the number of times the word 'denier' appears in the rebuttal. Both sides call each other names.
If you really believe that humans are not responsible for climate change in a significant capacity, and you see people running around talking about mass extinction and migration, then you'd probably call them alarmists.
If you really believe that humans are responsible for climate change in a significant capacity, and you see people running around dismissing climate change as nothing more than politics or researchers looking for more grants to keep their jobs in spite of the massive threat to, well, everything we know, love, and take for granted, then 'denier' is probably not even the meanest term you could come up with for them.
But talking about either one hasn't got anything to do with science, just like most schoolyard name-calling hasn't got anything to do with the science. There are industrial interests on both sides and not that many people who both care about solving the problem rather than calling a halt to civilization while also demonstrating the capacity and civility to talk about the issue without resorting to this kind of thing. Consequently, I can't help but wonder how many interested, semi-educated, but very-far-from-climate-experts like me there are out there who look at all this stuff and just scratch their heads.
...wasn't something released just the other day that says scientific readings from the ISS or some satellite or something, stating that there's not as much global warming really happening as their models say is happening?
Funny how that works.
We need that paper so we can dismiss AGW as a socialist plot. And you can pry my V8 SUV from my cold dead hands! Besides, it's anti-american to not drive a gas-guzzler.
If you actually read the paper and not the incredibly hyped press releases, the paper basically disclaims the validity of its own results. Note the following paragraph, immediately before the conclusions:
Our preliminary work on this issue suggests no simple answer to the question. We conclude that the fundamental obstacle to feedback diagnosis remains the same, no matter what time lag is addressed: without knowledge of time-varying radiative forcing components in the satellite radiative flux measurements, feedback cannot be accurately diagnosed from the co-variations between radiative flux and temperature.
The entire paper is about to trying to analyze the feedback from the co-variation between radiative flux and temperature-- this sentence basically says that, in their analysis, the analysis cannot be done accurately.
Basically, the paper does not "blow holes in global warming"-- what it does is say that this particular technique is not able to accurately discriminate the feedback function.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
You know what? I DO NOT CARE! Seriously, fuck it. If it's that much of a problem, just nuke every god-damn city and be done with it. Otherwise, STFU and live your life. I'm tired of being strung around by a bunch of politics and their nanny-state legislation. Either kill, remove democracy, or shut-up. But I for one will be damned if you boil me like a frog. Give me liberty, or give me death!
And on tonight's news, climate scientists all over the globe are decrying a report that claims the research and models of the climate scientists are wrong. Alarmist all over the world have shaken their fists in anger and retorted with angry words while trying to avoid having to explain how their current climate models don't match up with reality.
Back to you, Wendy.
Bearded Dragon
So, the guys making the anthropogenic climate change claims are wrong, and the guy who is anti acc is also wrong. Why can't we just admit that the Earth has been warming since the last ice age? Before the last ice age there was also a tropical age in which the sea levels were a good 26 feet higher than they are now. You know what that makes me think? It makes me think that climate patterns are always ... changing. OH NOES!
This guy is a professor at the (not very rigorous*) institution I did my undergraduate work at. (This is the "University of Alabama in Huntsville", not the larger and better-known University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.) I don't remember him specifically, but I know there was a cadre of anti-global-warming "climate scientists" there with a politico-religious axe to grind and who were pretty clearly not doing science for knowledge's sake.
It's notable that if you google this guy's (Spencer's) name, the first couple hits are to "www.drroyspencer.com/".
Nobody that I know who is actually a prominent scientist tries to pimp their public persona to this degree, or (tellingly) makes a big deal about the title "Dr."
*They really do have shitty academic standards. I graduated summa cum laude with a BS in physics, yet had never written $\vec x$ (we never did formal vector algebra), and wound up having to take four "remedial" undergrad classes at the Univ of Arizona where I am finishing up grad school.
Two Wrongs don't make a Right...
This is like counting the number of times the word 'denier' appears in the rebuttal. Both sides call each other names.
But I didn't see the word 'denier' in the rebuttal. All I saw was the footnote:
* Mind you, of course, I use the word "denier" quite a bit when discussing this topic, but in this case the shoe fits. When you deny overwhelming evidence, you’re a denier. Scientists trying to tell people what the science is telling them aren’t alarmists. They’re scientists. And as you can see from what other climate scientists are saying, what the Forbes article is based on apparently isn’t good science.
This two labels are equally dangerous in addressing global warming. This isn't a problem that half the world can solve without the help of the other half. By using either of these two terms, you're invoking a with-us-or-against-us mentality that is dangerous. Since these two labels are diametrically opposed, it does nobody any good to use them. Dismissing studies on global warming as 'alarmist' doesn't allow any information to be garnered from these reports which is really sad. Dismissing opponents as 'denialist' doesn't allow you to differentiate between people who acknowledge climate change but don't think it's man made and people who deny any climate change at all. Which is also very sad, there's people that want to do something about climate change but aren't sold that we're the cause of it. Why shut them out?
... I thought he had made an effective point without resorting to name-calling.
Like most things in life, this isn't black and white. By polarizing everyone involved, you halt the flow of information and push back the date where we can work together to solve this problem. There is a whole spectrum of solutions that lie in front of us, using the terms 'denialist' or 'alarmist' prevents us from selecting one of them as a cohesive group looking to move forward.
I applaud The Bad Astronomer from refraining from using the label 'denialist' as often as the original article used 'alarmist' (easily once per paragraph). I don't know why he included that footnote
My work here is dung.
Please define who is correct. watch your bias
...not just a river in Egypt :)
If the CAGW believers want to play the science game, let's hear their falsifiable hypothesis, and a concise list of observations of CO2 and temperature, or outgoing radiation from earth (as in this study), that would lead them to give up their belief.
For every hole they try to poke in Spencer's model, they're overlooking a dozen more in their own flawed models :)
I read this article. But it seems to me, this is Slashdot. We should demand some actual evidence of "wrongness" rather than just taking the words of people whose careers depend on it being wrong.
The Bad Astronomer himself does not exactly have a reputation of being unbiased on this subject.
I noticed the same point being brought up in the recent feed page when the first story was submitted, yet the editors didn't seem to pay any attention to it. Then a day or two later a different story gets posted with the same information.
Uncharitable interpretation: The editors aren't doing their job.
Charitable interpretation #1: A large group of people voted for the first submission, while a different large group of people voted for the second submission. The editors are just being agnostic and giving us what we (collectively) ask for.
Charitable(?) interpretation #2: The editors know that climate stories get lots of discussion, so they figured two different stories on the subject means we get to have twice as much "fun" yelling at each other about it.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
The point is that we're using way too much energy and food and pollute our own habitat and nobody cares. :)
Oh well. Evolution will find a way after we're gone
Privacy is terrorism.
I've done a meta-analysis and found that since the number of people using the word "denier" outnumbers the number of people using the word "alarmist" by a significant factor (p<0.05), the deniers must be touching a nerve, and therefore are right (p<pi/e).
Everything in my pants is flawed!
This current hoorah is why the research communities are reluctant to release raw data to any and all comers. As one who works a lot with raw data (not climate related, but similar in nature), you really need to take care in how you process the data and interpret the results. There is no such thing as perfect data, it all has warts of one kind or another. A lot of data-related science is focused on how to get supportable results from imperfect data. Any fool with a statistics package can take a couple gigabytes of raw data and make plots. A craft fool can do this and cherry-pick both the data used and the processing used to get the answer they want. It takes someone who knows what they're doing and who DOES NOT HAVE AN AX TO GRIND to get it right. If that climate data release last week were mine, I'd not be happy about sending it off to the loonies.
Let's conveniently ignore the following:
The evidence for rapid climate change is compelling (http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/)
Most climate scientists agree the main cause of the current global warming trend is human expansion of the "greenhouse effect" (http://climate.nasa.gov/causes/)
Until it says "most scientists agree that we needn't worry about AGW" I'll keep worrying about AGW.
My UID is prime. Hah!
author has a track record of using bad models to make incorrect conclusions
Typical NASA....
Weather predictions have been historically inaccurate. Why would anyone think that global warming or this new paper are any more accurate? We won't know that global warming is coming until it hits us, much like we won't know an ice age is coming until it hits us.
Here is the beginning of that paragraph, which you so conveniently left out:
"Determination of whether regression coefficients at various non-zero time lags might provide a more accurate estimate of feedback has been recently explored by [14], but is beyond the scope of this paper. Our preliminary work on this issue suggests no simple answer to the question. ..."
There, fixed that for ya. The first sentence you quoted is clearly referring to the immediately preceding sentence, not to the conclusions that follow.
Further, what the entire paper is about, is how well the climate models being shoved at us reflect reality. Their conclusions are that the climate models cannot predict this phenomenon, as they claim to. These are not the authors' own climate models, they are models taken from the IPCC reports. So there is no contradiction there.
So their conclusion is perfectly valid: if there is no way to "accurately diagnose" the effects of feedback, then the models we are told to believe in are deeply flawed. And that is what this paper shows.
You know, whether or not the original article is BS, why is the very first point that the rebuttal piece linked above makes the fact that the original article uses the word 'alarmist' umpteen times? This is like counting the number of times the word 'denier' appears in the rebuttal. Both sides call each other names.
Because a journalist isn't supposed to take sides. The journalists job is to take the science and communicate what it actually says to the general public. It is not their job to spin science or make it conform to talking points.
The repeated use of the phrase "alarmist computer models" shows that this is not a work of journalism, but one of propaganda.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I'm not defending the article in question, but this one is just a big a pile of crap as the other.
Granted, the original had a sensationalist headline and the article was distinctly written from a skeptic's perspective.
However - shouldn't we be looking at the raw data and either confirming or debunking it?
To Paraphrase this article: "You don't to need to see the data because people who stand the most to lose if this research is right are telling you it is bull. And you shouldn't ask any questions because the guy who did the research doesn't agree with the people this research doesn't support. Oh, and did we mention he thinks there's a creator? So it's only an *IF* he's right, and we've already explained that we don't need to verify this because, as you can see, he's just some crazy bastard who took funding from an energy company. We don't see any reason to go beyond the *if* and neither should you. Yeah, he's a corrupt, quack job for sure.. nothing to see here..."
I want to see the scientific proof, not the "he doesn't think like most of us so this article is flawed" bullshit.
Give me *real* scientific process.
Seriously - WTF happened to the scientific process? By this measuring stick, both articles are flawed. Can we get back to the real question now?
The goal is to scientifically understand our environment so we can make better predictions and protect it. Nobody I know wants dirty air or polluted water; climate change proponent or skeptic. So can we kindly STFU with that kind of crap and focus on finding the truth instead of trying to gain political points and power?
*sigh* - rant over-
/me sips his coffee and ponders a new sig...
That's all the whole damned thing is about.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the millions of people that think that mankind can spew millions of toxic substances into the environment and possibly think that the earth has the mechanisms to deal with it on a time frame conducive to human life.
It's like a person needed proof that lighting books on fire and flinging them about the house is going to eventually burn it down. Sure, we could spend millions studying it and testing it, but rationality dictates that some things you have to accept. Dumping tons of plastic in our oceans, for instance, even if we can't prove it's directly harmful, even if we can't produce proof of the scientific results of years of doing so because the time frames are just too large, one would think that we are intelligent enough as a species to recognize that even if we can't prove it's a bad thing, there is absolutely no way it could possibly be a good thing.
I feel the same way about the climate change deniers. Maybe we can't prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that mass burning of fossil fuels is having a deleterious effect on the environment, I would think that enough people have the IQ to recognize that there is no way it could possibly be a good thing at all. As the dinosaurs weren't cruising around in billions of vehicles powered by fossil fuels we don't have direct evidence that it would have been bad for them to do it...but do we honestly need evidence to accept something so fundamental?
Yea, that footnote was pretty atrocious. First off, the guy who wrote the paper that the Forbes OpEd was based on was a scientist. And in general, the footnote is pretty much saying "I'm right because I'm right and you're wrong because you disagree with me, so therefore my pejorative term for you is fine but your pejorative term for me is not".
read the emails. Unlike Gore's contention to the CNN reporter that they were "10 years old and not relevant any more", the most recent was just days before the files were leaked. The emails exchanges between members of the CRC gang describe how they gained control of climate journals and stuffed the "peer review" committees with their own people, smeared highly acclaimed climatologists from MIT and other highly ranked institutions because they didn't genuflect to AGW, and attempted or did destroy careers of lesser known academics who dared publish or discuss ideas that disagreed with AGW. The tactics they described are exactly those used to attack this satellite study.
Also in the FOIA files were documents of contracts between the CRC and the UN IUPPC which set up milestones for delivery of "data" from "experiments" which would support AGW. As one who did anti-metabolite cancer research in grad school, I find it incredulous that a group of scientists could sign a contract and promise to deliver "proof" of AGW in exchange for cash (a.k.a. "grant money"). One could call it bribe money.
Despite all their claims to superior knowledge and skill I also read the HARRYREADME.TXT file. THAT was an eye opener. It explains how they could guarantee "deliverables" according to a preset time lines agreed to in their contracts with the IUPCC. A running dialog of how they manipulated, and then finally created imaginary data in order to product a "deliverable", as their contract with the UN IUPPC called them. They literally did try to "hide the decline" (the 0.7F decline in world temperature during the decade of 2000), and surpress the Maunder minimum in the middle ages. They fudged data from all over the globe and cherry picked a few data points while ignoring a vast mountain of contradictory data, always with a ready explanation as to why. They were also caught trying to changing the historical CO2 data collected at Hawaii.
Al Gore's motive for Carbon Credits had less to do with controlling the release of CO2 into the atmosphere and more to do with plain old simply greed.
All of this reminds me of the USSR trip into Bazzaro Land when Communist Party officially recognized the work of the Russian biologist Lysenko, whose theories dovetailed neatly with Marxist dogma. While Lysenko was spending government money to rig "experiments" and buy cronies willing to do the same, it set Soviet biology back more than 30 years. He was eventually discredited. Sooner or later the AGW theories will fall by the wayside as well, especially when their proponents realize that no one is going to be scared into giving up their personal freedoms and submit to Maxist/Socialist dogma, as the GreenPeace Activist and a CRC member discussed in one of their emails. The GreenPeace guy was the one whose article about Amazon deforestation was revealed to be totally bogus.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Just five years ago, Charles Monnett was one of the scientists whose observation that several polar bears had drowned in the Arctic Ocean helped galvanize the global warming movement.
Now, the wildlife biologist is on administrative leave and facing accusations of scientific misconduct.
Come on. We're all adults here. We all are fully aware that global warming climate change activism is just misusing science to obtain good political results. What does it matter about the facts, so long as the narrative is correct? If climate change is "scientifically" true, then it follows that a lot of desirable political changes need to be made. Remember the Kyoto treaty? The entire idea was to destroy the evil capitalist economies of the West, while excluding the economies of Brazil, China, and India, all of whom are huge polluters. Why can't we get competent scientists who can make their results ironclad, so that we don't have this conflict between the truth and the narrative? I just don't get it. The changes they desire are good, there can be no question. Was climate change the appropriate vehicle to attach their political aspirations? After all, if a political point can be proven by science then anyone opposing it is not a noble dissenter, but a denialist. It brings to mind the old Soviet Union, when people were imprisoned for denying the scientific proof of Marxism. Why can't we imprison climate change denialists? What the fuck is wrong with these people who won't recognize scientific facts?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
You make an excellent point about The Bad Astronomer.
Why is it that we're reading duelling propaganda on instead of reasoned discussion?
the model used is 'unrealistic' and 'incorrect,' and the author has a track record of using bad models to make incorrect conclusions
...yeah, just about everybody on either side of the Global Warming debate says that about just about everybody they disagree with.
(And very rarely does anyone say why a model is unrealistic or incorrect.)
Most climate science on both sides of the argument is on shaky ground. I totally agree with Freeman Dyson.
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dysonf07/dysonf07_index.html
The true believers on both sides are way too confident in their beliefs. They (both sides) are closer to religion than they are to real science. There is way too much ad hominem and way too little real science.
If I had to pick a side in the debate, I would tend to side with Henrik_Svensmark. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrik_Svensmark His theory about cosmic rays modulating cloud formation has, at least, the advantage of being falsifiable. That stands in stark contrast with Al Gore who takes absolutely anything as proof of anthropogenic global warming. ;-)
Roy Spencer, the co-author of the "gaping hole" study, is on the board of advisors of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.
These folk believe, among other things, that God will not allow the Earth to be harmed by Global Warming:
"The world is in the grip of an idea: that burning fossil fuels to provide affordable, abundant energy is causing global warming that will be so dangerous that we must stop it by reducing our use of fossil fuels, no matter the cost. Is that idea true? We believe not. We believe that idea – we'll call it "global warming alarmism" – fails the tests of theology, science, and economics."
This is not science.
If carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is such a good insulator, why don't they line my coffee mug with it? What do they use instead? Vacuum. Vacuum is the best insulator there is, and guess what surrounds the atmosphere? Vacuum, that's what. You won't see me worried about CO2 as much as the millions of BTUs put out by the power plant and the 500watt video card it powers so you use to play WoW. Damn the man.
"I admit I call them deniers, but it's ok for me to be insulting because I'm right and they are wrong, nyah nyah so there."
I just looked at the article. It seems to be saying that the earth system is much larger than any laboratory experiment and perhaps there is a difference between the earth and a beaker of water in the lab. I think that's a pretty fair statement. Whether the feedback issues that are raised are significant, well, I'll let the deniers argue with the alarmists over that issue.
As for the term "deniers", sorry. That's untrue. The evidence isn't being denied. It's the INTERPRETATION of that evidence that is debated. Or at least trying to be debated. Most pro AGW "alarmists" refuse to debate anything because they claim the issue is decided and there is no need for any further debate. Sorta like there was no need to debate the geocentric/heliocentric evidence.
"However - shouldn't we be looking at the raw data and either confirming or debunking it?"
The "raw data" used was the very same data from CRU that the IPCC used in its infamous reports. It wasn't widely available until now... they just released the entirety of the data to the public, because their earlier failure to do so pissed off a lot of people.
But note that this data -- that is to say, the data that CRU used (and supplied, in part, to others) for the creation of those papers and reports is not really "raw data" at all. Rather, it has been highly manipulated to ''adjust" and "statistically fit" the data together.
This data -- or at least the end-result manipulated data -- has been debunked, and the methods used to manipulate it seriously called into question (see the Wegman Report). But the alarmists just keep going along as though that never happened and nothing is wrong.
Further, the climate models used in the paper were the same models used by the IPCC to form its reports on climate. For their set they chose the 3 models most sensitive to radiative forcings, and the 3 least sensitive to radiative forcings. That seems pretty fair to me.
What this report says, in essence, is that it is essentially impossible for the climate models tested to model actual climate, because there are significant variables that they do not -- cannot -- account for.
Whether that is true, we will know in time. But all these attacks on the man's character (not referring to parent here) add nothing to the discussion.
Firstly a meta analysis is an analysis of other peoples research, if you are just checking scientific papers please list them, along with your search methodology. if you looked at forum text, then you are not looking at proper studies so you are doing an analysis not a meta analysis, it certainly does not reflect my experience, so where did you get the text for your analysis? A list of websites (or your search methodology as an algorithm) and the scripts that or search algorithm you used you used to count would be good, remember to compare to the text volume, or number of posters, we want the proportion of hysterics on either side as the total number without a comparison would not be a fair comparison.
Oh sorry did you just look? You know that you are probably wrong. It is a known flaw in human psychology that you notice, and remember, people who disagree with you or insult you more than people who are nice, so any hand count by anyone who cares is at best inaccurate and more so the more strongly they feel.
Also what method did you use to calculate you probability?
People get so worked up over this shit. This isn't science - the "science" is pretty inconclusive otherwise there wouldn't be so much name calling. Nah, this is politics. And politics has absolutely nothing to do with science.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Regardless of you believe the study for or against Global Warming, the fact is that 90% of the data used in their models is proxy.. There is no way that the data can be accurately described for temperatures 200 years ago. (For example)...
If you cant see that the whole green push is mainly for the investors to finally get back some of the millions they've pumped into the process, then I feel sorry for you.
No nobody could actually have problems with the theory or the huge political movement pushing it. They must be purely selfish!
I have problems with them. I've never owned a V8. I've never even considered buying a V8. I was looking to buy a sports car, and was disgusted that Chevy only gave the real sports package with the V8, nothing smaller, on what I was looking at. I went with another manufacuter with an engine less than half the size.
I've driven vehicles with V8s before and even a 14-liter straight 6, but they had to haul heavy stuff, thus the reason for the big diesels. Or maybe you think I should have been pulling a 30 kW diesel generator with a Prius?
Given the size of your head, I doubt it can be wrapped around anything.
Which still leaves the question: How do we explain the climate changes we have witnessed/saw/felt in the past few years (Am not talking 100 years, am talking 10 or less)?
The are parts of the world that are getting more rain, 200% times more. Parts of the world where rain was normal, now they have it less and less. Parts of the world where ice was before, where a dessert was before, where animals roamed before. Everybody anywhere has noticed the increase heat, this is not country limited but world limited guys. What about some weird phenomenons of animals that are appearing in places that they normally would not appear (At least 20, 50 years ago and from there way back more.). What about the ridiculous amount of earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, hurricanes, whatever other changes that get people with 2 eyes opened and instead trying to still, STILL, be talking about politics, who is right, who is wrong. Right now nobody cares who is correct, what the people of the whole world want is to know WHAT is going on, WHY is it going on, HOW is it going on and if we can in any way correct the problems then show THAT type of answer. Bickering over a paper is stupid and the money (which has no value once we are all dead anyway because of politics) spend on looking for the other guys wrong answer could have been better spend looking for the solution to the only problem that we have, at least the biggest of them all, that humanity faces, together.
If you concur with this point of view and feel the same way, vote this up so new readers can get to it quickly and ponder over it cause, at the end, we are not alone in this and we can not do it alone. The best of what we, us have done, has always been done together.
If there was a Satan and he did buy souls, I'd wager a good chunk of the population of this planet would probably sell it to him for an iPhone 5. The fact of the matter is that people never do the sensible thing, they never consider long-term consequences. Even without well-funded oil-friendly groups like the Heartland Institute, it would be damned hard to convince people that puking hundreds of millions of years worth of CO2 into the atmosphere in the space of a few centuries was a bad thing, and even getting them to that point it would be even harder to convince them that they needed to change their behaviors.
Bring in groups like the Heartland Institute and its small number of well-paid "researchers", and it becomes well-nigh impossible. In a hundred years I guarantee you our great-great grandchildren will be asking "What in the fuck was wrong with people?" By then, it will be too late, of course, on several fronts; not just AGW but peak oil and trying desperately after we've stuck it all in our collective gas tanks to try to find new techniques to overcome our inability to wean ourselves of cheap complex hydrocarbons.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
When did scientists deviate from the scientific process that has been in place for hundreds of years?
I'm not a scientist but I've read enough to know that they are supposed to test their hypothesis (or claims) and then make public to other scientists the data/methods of their testing to prove they are correct.
That has been the scientific method that has brought mankind out of the misery of centuries of sickness, ignorance and death.
Why have scientists changed this process? Phony "science" will NEVER stand up to scrutiny.
Any scientific results and the data and methods used that are not made available to any and all scientists who wish to reproduce the results should be immediately thrown out and those scientists should be ridiculed by the scientific community.
Those scientists that sit by quietly watching their field being turned into a joke by the political community should be ashamed.
What's worse is the incredible damage they are doing to their own reputation as an unbiased community. What a shame they have fallen by the wayside the same way all other fields and practices have done so in the past.
I truly believed science was uncorruptable.
That it, and only it, could be trusted to lead humanity forward.
Unfortunately the truth seems to be that scientists have no more integrity than any other human.
Okay, Prof. A says the world is a sphere. Prof. B says the world if flat. Prof. A has a extensive list of evidence coalescing on a coherent picture. Prof. B has a large collection of counterarguments against various specific pieces of Prof. A's list. Prof. A believes that, as a society, we'd be best off in working out how to best prosper in a spherical world. Prof. B believes it would be premature to go ahead with that before we've had a debate and opened our minds to the reinterpretation of all of Prof. A's evidence. Indeed, Prof. B cites as further evidence of the wrongness of Prof. A's analysis that so many other scientists agree with Prof. A. How, after all, could so many scientists agree, despite all the counterarguments collected by Prof. B, unless those scientists were conspiring to foist their "spherical earth" interpretation on society?
Ya know, sometimes you've just got to take what the majority of your best scientists suggest is the most successful set of theories and best collected sets of observations and go with that. This is despite that everything and anything is always open to doubt. We're doubt monkeys. That aspect of us is integral to our capacity to do science. But it's not the whole game. And treating it like it's the whole game is as incapacitating as if we lacked all doubt to begin with.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
In France, we have our share of human-induced climate change sceptics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_All%C3%A8gre). In response, french scientists gathered to present all the tools, methods and models used to analyse climate (http://www.amazon.fr/climat-%C3%A0-d%C3%A9couvert-Catherine-Jeandel/dp/2271071984/ref=wl_it_dp_o).
There is no satellite equivalent to a thermometer reading. The extrapolation of temperature relies on complex poorly understood models. For that reason, the climate science community to not rely on it for anything, but instead try to improve the models to understand how microwaves leave the surface and clouds. You, sir, are looking at a strawman if you think this has anything to do with the scientific consensus.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the millions of people that think that mankind can spew millions of toxic substances into the environment and possibly think that the earth has the mechanisms to deal with it on a time frame conducive to human life.
See, I think a reasonable baseline for people who don't know a lot about this subject is 'golly, it doesn't seem to make sense that we can just dump stuff into the ground or the air or the water with no consequences.' I'm with you so far.
Where I start to get alienated is the massive jump a lot of environmentalists make when they conclude that we shouldn't dump anything at all anyplace, and not only that, but that anyone who produces anything that requires energy or whose livelihood depends on it is like Cobra Commander cackling on a doomsday device. I don't think that 'most people' are unconcerned about the environment; I think 'most people' get turned off when they see protesters chaining themselves to a power plant because they don't approve of anything except solar and wind power. People who think it's OK for gas to double or triple in price because 'maybe then we'll understand how important this issue is.'
On the other side you have people like one couple in my town who drive around in a hummer in the suburbs for no reason I can see. I do think that's wasteful. I'm not sure that Beckham having his fourth child is an outrageous use of carbon as some people seem to think it is.
And carbon itself seems to be the big question. Again, it's easy to get folks on board when you're talking about dumping toxins into the water or the ground or the air. The argument in favor of cutting carbon emissions seems to be 'carbon retains some amount of heat, and the world seems to have more heat than it did, and we've been emitting a lot of carbon ... so, carbon must be it!' It's a very reasonable hypothesis and that seems to be what a lot of the science is focused on: is this true (seems to me like it could well be), but more importantly, to what extent is this true?
I'd sign off on closing down every coal plant in this country if we could deregulate Nuclear enough so that it doesn't take 10 years to see an ROI on it. But I don't see a lot of environmentalists coming with me on that.
I verified these things for myself, to my own satisfaction. (I have a background in the hard sciences, but not climate science.)
This 10 min clip speaks to that questions you bring up. I dare you to sit all the way through it.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I've done an analysis and determined that the more the terms "denier" and "alarmist" are used the more there is an increase in hot air.
as we all know hot air leads to global warming.
Carbon Credits - trading desks managed by Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan
University of East Anglia (UEA) Climate Research Unit (CRU) claims to only keep “value added data” and destroyed raw data (I can get a 2 TB drive for $70)
United Nations - What a joke. Who can trust anything coming out of this organization?
Banks, governments, big business need your money and global warming is their meal ticket. Even if you were responsible with your resources, paid your global warming indulgence tax, and did not produce a single atom of carbon emission, the world population increase.and its energy demands will render your efforts pointless. If you really buy into the notion that human activity is a major factor in global warming, then have your testicles and/or uterus removed and throw it on the global pile of reproductive organs. That would be a meaningful solution.
OK leaving the Data Studies, models, whatever behind. I'm 58 and the weather has changed severely for the worse than when I was young. A LOT more tornado's , hurricane's, severe thnderstorms, volcanic eruptions, tsunami's, and so on. That is a irrefutable fact. I've seen higher constant temperatures than ever in my life. The winters have less snow but stay below freezing longer than they ever have. Climate change is a fact. Look at movies of huge hunks of the icecaps breaking off and melting. So irregardless of whether it is caused by CO2 or Bob's BBQ grill or cow farts, the climate has severely changed. And for the worse, not better. Wake up and look around you.
I'm old, not dead. Well that's my 2 cents worth, your mileage may vary. I say what I think, not what you want to hear.
It worries me how many legitimate articles on climate change may be hiding because they are against current predictions and models, and researchers are fearing public lynching . It's truly worrying.
There is no need to worry. Anti-consensus articles have no trouble seeing the light of day even when they are chock full of specious reasoning. Anti-consensus scientists have no trouble getting funding (e.g. Soon, Baliunas, Spencer, Chritie, McIntyre, McKitrick). These articles are thoroughly examined and debunked every time. (See here for an example of scientific discourse on these issues.)
You can verify all of this YOURSELF, with minimal effort.
The only people who receive death threats are legitimate climate scientists, such as Michael Mann.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
according to you reality is whatever a bunch of spoiled children who don't want to pay for the damage they've caused, tell you it is.
he wouldn't have put all that gas in the ground where those pesky Ayrab tourists live
There is another religion which says that the earth has endless resources, and that pollution and waste do not matter. We killed or the dodos, but who cares, right? There are /endless/ species of birds for us to kill, and land to ruin, and oceans to pollute.
Ideologies aside, there is a rational discussion about economic concerns, which is what adults are having on this issue.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I disagree with your premises. Why would we need any carbon tax if global warming is beneficial to the biosphere and humanity as a whole (see: Medieval Warm Period).
A carbon tax need not be revenue positive (like the proposed Australian model), and thus is not a way for the government to raise money, but rather to bias the economy towards new technology.
/lot/ of arguments.
As for the medieval warm period, that is a well known debunked denialist canard, but for some reason it just keeps coming up over and over again, like someone isn't listening.
There is actually no known denialist argument that has not been resounded debunked, and we are talking about a
The libertarian position does not work in situations where there is going to be a tragedy of the commons -- such as climate change. Pure and simple.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
If we follow deniers, and they are right, we will get poor only when we run out of fossil fuels. Before we've burned all coal, we'll be in 22nd century
If we follow deniers, and they are wrong, billions will die, cities will get swallowed up by oceans, and more fun stuff
If we follow alarmists, and they are right, we will be a bit poorer, but still alive
If we follow alarmists, and they are wrong, we will be a bit poorer
And the problem lies in point 2. If global warming is true, and we don't do a thing, we're fucked. If it is however not true, and we do try to prevent it, we probably would end up using renewable energy a bit earlier than strictly necessary.
It is however completely inconsistent to be alarmist and against nuclear energy.
Not at all. Only 10% of scientists really actually believe this. The next 87% merely followed suit. It was inevitable.
It's because everyone's operational default mode is set to "I am right all of the time". As in, there is no cognition of error at all. Every single one of us on Earth at this exact moment operates under the assumption that everything we see, think, and believe in is "right". No one lives in a state of perpetual error, because error is a reversion of thinking, of being. And it's not a pleasant state to be in.
When you prove someone wrong, from your perspective, you are correcting someone's interpretation of the fact in question. From their perspective, you are rebuking their very existence because up until that moment, they thought they were right. Then they realize that their entire life up until that point was in error. And thus reversion of thinking, and cognitive dissonance.
What you are describing is the attempt of a person who may be wrong to protect his/her ego against the actual accusation of being wrong, by removing the question of whether he/she is wrong to begin with. They will not recognize the authority or the basis of the person making the statement, and like you said, will believe whatever contradictory evidence is offered by someone else regardless of qualification, because they can then retain the belief and thus the existence of being "right".
the problem with the entire AGW argument is that you have two sides motivated to extreme ideological opposition with each other over scientifically gathered factual evidence that is so convoluted and complex that it can sustain multiple different interpretations (much like the competing multiverse hypotheses), and adherents to the different interpretations cannot accept the "Other interpretation" because to do so would mean that their entire invested belief structure, and therefore who they perceive themselves to be, is wrong. And the more you beat down on them, the more fiercely they cling to their beliefs--developing a martyr complex.
Much like how the Millerites of the 1850s watched the repeated failures of their apocalyptic predictions of Judgment day, and then decided to cling to their convictions regardless (becoming the Seventh Day Adventists), we will see further retrenchment of pro- and anti-AGW believers. This has progressed well past the point where anyone can admit their wrong. Now it's dogmatic religion, on both sides. And once it's a religion, it's here to stay.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
A few weeks ago a local paper (Vancouver Sun) had a "Letter to the Editor" complaining about another
that blamed GW on volcanoes. "Just like smoking a few years back - just a bunch of self serving
capitalists at it again" The response should have read "I don't believe that - we need to put a bunch of money
into a research fund for Vulcanologists"; make it big and do it now and do not control the results!
dkr
(And very rarely does anyone say why a model is unrealistic or incorrect.)
On the contrary, climate scientists say *exactly* why the model is wrong. (Not that discussion is published on Roy Spencer's website.) Unfortunately the details don't fit between two commercials, and many simply don't want to hear it anyway.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Both sides call each other names.
The argument of the relative middle ground is *precisely* how astro-turf organisations like Heartland and Marshall spread FUD. They take an extreme position, drum up a lot of noise, and then watch as "reasonable" people say "the truth must be somewhere in-between". This has been documented in history time and time again, and is orchestrated by the same people. It is really fascinating to learn about how this part of the public discourse works.
One of the interesting things about all of this is that key people, such as Frank Luntz freely admit that they are manipulating the discourse on climate change, and it simply makes no difference.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
> The claim is that we need to live like hippies and give all our money to Al Gore and friends or THE ENTIRE EARTH WILL BE RUINED FOREVER.
Who, exactly, has made that claim?
I've seen calls for reduction in the production of greenhouse gasses, e.g. by moving to nuclear energy, but I've never seen serious claims that we should all join a hippy commune. While the earth will no doubt survive climate change and some effects are inevitable, there are people who believe that we should move to mitigate the damages so that we will be able to avoid the worst of the problems caused by a global rise in temperature.
I'll pull it with a Nissan Leaf. I can keep the generator running and plugged into the Leaf so I'll have enough power.
OTOH, that's not far from reality. Nissan had diesel trucks with large diesel generators on the back to charge the Leafs used for promos.
The earth has been warming, as a general trend, for at least 10,000. That's why, where I sit at the moment in Northern Illinois, there isn't about a mile of ice over my head. Until somebody explains the mechanism of this trend; a trend that started long before CO2-producing civilizations, nobody can say for sure how human produced green house gases are affecting the earth's climate. This is a lot more complicated than just human-produced CO2. Water vapor is, by far, the most effective green house gas, methane is 35 times more effective than the same volume of CO2, the Sun's cycles affect our planet tremendously, Earth's orbit and tilt change over time, and yet, because we're here, and can take measurements, we assume it must be us causing a global disaster. It all seems too ego-centric to take seriously; at least until some more questions are answered.
You are correct that a nerve has been hit -- there is plain old bloody-mindedness at play. But your analysis is wrong. Read the book, and learn the history of how the politically savvy bully scientists who are generally just interested in the facts of their domain.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
and by saying that it is not possible to track this function, this blows a hole in the previous theories.
Nobody uses the satellite temperature record for the very reasons that Roy Spencer talks about in his paper. Never have, and maybe never will.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Am I the only one who misses the old days when a post like this would reliably contain an obfuscated Goatse link within the first three comments?
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
People using the word "flat earthers" outnumbers "round earthers" by a significant factor (326,000 vs 9,050 Google hits). So...?
which they cannot come close to proving
Climate science was pretty much proven in 1979 by any reasonable objective scientific standard. You can learn learn about the history of the "debate" here. This is a short 10 minute clip on what we know about climate change.
It is easy to see anti-AGW arguments fall flat on their face when you look into the history of each claim, and read the sources of each claim and the responses. It is surprisingly little work.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I'll start believing in CAGW when *any* alarmist makes a clear, concise list of observations that would falsify their hypothesis, and then we all try *really hard* to look for those observations, and are completely unable to find any. That's called science.
This is obviously prone to moving the goal-posts, which we have already seen. A few scientists investigated global cooling in the 70s, and found that their falsifiable hypothesis didn't stack up. This is purely the scientific method in process. By 1979, a consensus had been built on warming, and nobody has been able to make a cogent argument against it despite numerous attempts.
What you really want is to increase the burden of proof everytime more proof becomes available.
Having some personal training in statistics, physics and chemistry, (but not climate science) I was able to grok the science and follow the academic discourse personally. I also have training in psychology, and that is much more useful in understanding the "debate".
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
If we follow deniers, and they are right, we will get poor only when we run out of fossil fuels. Before we've burned all coal, we'll be in 22nd century
Strawman. Disbelief in AGW has nothing to do with belief or disbelief that we've reached maximum oil or that an economy relying on cheap oil is good or bad. One can be anti-oil and anti-AGW at the same time.
And the problem lies in point 2. If global warming is true, and we don't do a thing, we're fucked. If it is however not true, and we do try to prevent it, we probably would end up using renewable energy a bit earlier than strictly necessary.
You forget the third potential result: if "global warming" is true but AGW is not, then we will need to take increasingly drastic action as we attempt to solve a problem by removing something that is not a causal factor. What, returning the US to pre-2000 levels of energy use and CO2 emission didn't stop the warming? Then we must reduce even more, and tax CO2 emissions even more. It isn't a case of being "a bit poorer", it a case of destroying major economic systems as unforseen consequences of increasingly strict limits overrun common sense.
Please refer to the stories of Xerxes and the slaves whipping the waves to stop the tide for an analogy. There will never be a point that AGW proponents say "oops, we were wrong". It will ALWAYS be "you didn't conserve enough, it was too late, we were past the tipping point, etc..."
It is however completely inconsistent to be alarmist and against nuclear energy.
This is true. If you truly believe AGW exists, then being against using the known technology to reduce what you think is causing that AGW disingenuous. However, you can disbelieve AGW and still think that switching to nuclear power is necessary for continued existance.
Wouldn't it be the other way around? People tend to use more extreme, inflammatory and aggressive dialogues when they are losing the debate.
The people who tend to remain calm and balanced are usually more credible.
University of East Anglia (UEA) Climate Research Unit (CRU) claims to only keep “value added data” and destroyed raw data (I can get a 2 TB drive for $70)
Back when they discarded the raw data that they did you couldn't get a 2 TB drive for any amount of money. If you tried to build on it might have been the size of a semi-trailer.
Any climate prediction 100 years in to the future based solely on computer models and does not take sociological factors in to account is politics and has little to do with science. In time it will be as discredited as the heliocentric model.
When will scientists grow a pair do some real critical thinking and point out the painfully obvious? The emperor has no clothes.
As soon as they want to be excoriated that's when.
for I have sinned.
Uhmmm...this is the confessional, isn't it?!
--
If you truly believe AGW exists, then being against using the known technology to reduce what you think is causing that AGW [is] disingenuous.
Hardly. You're silently asserting that nuclear power is the only known or realistically achievable technology to "solve" AGW. That is a matter of debate. Even assuming, for the moment, that you're right, it's still hardly disingenuous behavior, merely conflicted. If you think using nuclear power has dire consequences AND you think further emissions will have dire consequences AND nuclear power is the only way to reduce emssions, you're in a dilemma.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
Because a journalist isn't supposed to take sides.
On the contrary, taking sides is exactly what the Op/Ed section of the paper is for.
I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the millions of people that think that mankind can spew millions of toxic substances into the environment and possibly think that the earth has the mechanisms to deal with it on a time frame conducive to human life.
They can't.
But the argument is not over toxic substances. It's over CO2. Something we breathe, and all plants need to live. It's about as far from being a toxin as you can get.
You are monumentally misinformed. Or an idiot. Or maybe both.
CO2 is in fact a toxin to animal life. Yes, to plants it's basically food -- that doesn't mean it isn't a toxin for animals. It's a waste product of animal metabolism and displaces oxygen in the blood, so getting rid of it is very important. Plants eat CO2 and excrete O2, animals eat O2 and excrete CO2.
The only reason the CO2 in the atmosphere isn't a problem for animals is that it's a relatively low concentration, less than 1% by volume. (The atmosphere is mostly nitrogen, oxygen, and argon, in that order. Yes, there's more argon in the atmosphere than CO2.) Vertebrate lungs depend on that low concentration of CO2 to work: it's easy to get rid of a gas dissolved in the blood through passive exchange membranes if the partial pressure of that gas in the atmosphere is low.
Breathing an atmosphere too rich in CO2 raises internal CO2 concentration and has some very negative effects:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide#Toxicity
The sad thing is that efforts to curtain REAL toxins have fallen by the wayside in the rush to block the almighty CO2. Not that the hoax is up I rather look forward to us being able to try and reduce REAL pollution, for that is causing far more harm to the planet than CO2 ever will.
What a load of BS. What efforts to reduce other forms of pollution have fallen by the wayside due to efforts to reduce CO2 emissions? Name even one. For that matter, name one industrial pollutant which has as much potential to cause harm as CO2. (And please note: the reason we worry about CO2 emissions isn't even toxicity. The levels required to induce global climate change fall far short of toxic levels.)
UAT (Tuscaloosa) is "larger and better-known" than UAH (Huntsville), but it's better-known for being a football factory and party school, and also known for having a garbage engineering school. UAH has a much better reputation in the hard sciences than UAT, which, when it's known for anything other than cheating in football or being a comfortable place for Birmingham brats to waste Daddy's money on cocaine, is at best a passible business school or a cheap law school. It's a joke in science and engineering.
Having worked in that part of the country for 20 years, I wouldn't trust a UAT grad to clean up my lab, much less to judge an actual scientific study.
I hesitate to post this on a forum dominated by coders, but c'mon, guys/gals. A model is not science. A model is, at best, a tool to suggest where to look for more hard data.
Suggesting that any "climate model" is anything like actual empirical data is kind of like asserting that because Madden 2011 is really cool and cost millions of dollars to produce, playing it on automatic will tell you who'll win the next Super Bowl.
No, it won't. I don't care how smart the coders are, they don't (and can't) understand and/or model a system as complex as a planetary atmosphere and/or climate. That's not because they're stupid--it's because nobody is, or can be, that intelligent.
You just chose to focus on an irrelevant piece of the text, and doing exactly what you claim he did.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Depends on how you define poorer I suppose. Different for sure, but not necessarily worse off.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Problem is, one of the sides is out there, driving in their hummer and buying another one as soon as gas drop 25 cents. The other side only ever gets a compromise because they are so extreme. I'm not saying that we all have to go to the extreme, but it would be a hell of a lot easier to agree to drop all fuel taxes if people would buy fuel efficient vehicles when gas isn't expensive.
And I'd sing off on that if you could prove that it wouldn't result in large tracts of unusable land... Deregulation is a red herring, it just so happens that nuclear is actually really expensive when you include all of the R&D, mining, reprocessing/storage and safety appropriate for the potential risks. Sort of socialising all the risks, just like we are doing with burning fossils now, alternative energy (including nuclear) will be more expensive for at least a while after widespread adoption. There is no way around it, if we are to remain a technological race, we will have to develop better technologies (and I think it's a damn fine cause to use our considerable surplus resources on... better then front lawns anyways).
Uh dude it's totally legitimate to focus on the number of times the guy says "alarmists" because it shows that he is biased against the idea of global warming.
It shows the fact that he is nothing more than a conservative scumbag trying to undermine science for some inexplicable reason.
Or obscuring it... Those who cast doubt on the human origin of increased CO2 are no better than those who deny that climate change exists.
This IS NOT a point of controversy among actual climate scientists. Measuring of CO2 output has been done for decades now, and the picture is clear - human activity accounts for the vast majority of the increase.
I have read repeated posts from denialists attached to any news report on volcanic activity, saying how insignificant human activity must be compared to such a huge natural event. In fact, exactly the opposite is true - the CO2 output of all the world's volcanoes is insignificant next to the human output, constituting less than 0.4%.
Parent post assumes that the article in question-- and presumably the large number of similar articles that have been published over the years-- are part of a debate.
A debate is a way of throwing a couple of arguments at each other to determine their strengths and weaknesses and thus move more closely toward the truth. In this sense, there are never any losers in an honest debate since both parties and their audience leave with a better appreciation of the issues.
Propaganda, though, has nothing to do with the search for truth; its sole purpose is to get the audience to behave in a certain way. The behavior sought might be to raise a lot of confusion about public policies and laws that are based on scientific foundations.
When propaganda calls itself a debate, when it takes on the form of a debate, it does not become a debate. It remains propaganda.
Will
I've done a meta-analysis and found that since the number of people using the word "denier" outnumbers the number of people using the word "alarmist" by a significant factor (p<0.05), the deniers must be touching a nerve, and therefore are right (p<pi/e).
Meta-alarmist or meta-denier-which are you? Lao-Tzu said " to know the truth of any one thing one must compare it to it's opposite ", in other words-the truth is somewhere in-between. Everyone has a personal view of the truth and all truth is a product of perspective.
Round 1: Reductive Science
Winner by KO over four centuries: Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Laplace, Lagrange, to name just a few.
Round 2: Voodoo Science
Winner by KO over two centuries: Maxwell, Michelson, Heisenberg, SchrÃdinger, Einstein, Feynman/Schwinger/Tomonga.
Round 3: Giant Messy Dynamic Systems Science
Losing on points in the first round, but rallying furious when pressed to the ropes, the IPCC alliance of funding activists.
It's a big job. Given a century of progressive refinement, we'll soon have something to crow about.
Nobody seriously doubts the climate scientists will ultimately come up with a story that jives with reality. The debate here is whether we should shift a trillion dollars worth of present-day economic activity on an alpha 0.1 quality model somewhere around the Windows 3.0 turning point.
Given the complexity of the earth's climate system, there's no reason to think this model has converged to reality over such a short time frame, any more than we should expect our rocket scientists to build a fully functional Star Wars spaced-based laser system in under 30 years if we could return CERN for a full money-back refund.
Our rocket scientists put a man on the moon, and sent space probes to the most distant reaches of the solar system. I have some reason to trust them. Name *one* climate system the IPCC has ever got right.
Boyle's law and the triple point of water and the greenhouse effect on Venus, with a partial pressure of CO2 at the planet's surface of just under 9MPa. Did I miss any other illustrious accomplishments?
Or do we believe them simply because the IPCC has more scientists than their model has free variables? One scientist per variable, they've got the entire system covered. If only we managed software development half as well.
I should add that the opponents of climate change have intent of being right on any time frame that exceeds their present day vested interests.
On one side we have no credible agenda whatsoever, on the other side we have a credible agenda trying to take credit for an accomplishment we won't see for many decades yet, and telling us to take radical action, with no reliable metric for cost effectiveness, except that the grants keep flowing.
As software people, we ought to know what a premature declaration of victory looks like. You know, the 30 year lag between when a technology first is announced as "just around the corner" and when it's mature and cost effective for mass consumption.
On that score, I don't see much difference between the IPCC and the AI people from the 1960s. Slowly the AI people are winning the battle. Their system is only mildly more difficult than the climate system.
In some ways, the IPCC is less testable than string theory. If we had a handy inventory of Genesis planets, we could really put them in their place.
But no, they get special dispensation to effectively claim, "if the planet warms up catastrophically, we were right all along". Even if their present model is 100% certifiable bullshit applied to any Genesis planet.
To satisfy the lameness filter while my coloured correction card chases my original post.
Celebrating Richard Feynman at TEDxCaltech
This is quite possibly the most succinct and intelligent post I have seen on this subject in a long time.
Sadly, I believe that there is a scientific debate going on about this subject - but we never get to see it, as the meaningful content is drowned out by the media noise.
but do we honestly need evidence to accept something so fundamental?
You just played the "AGW is a fundamentally true and as such needs no proof card." we call that religion (or perhaps you do believe in the,magic sky pixie who made the Universe - after all, "do we honestly need evidence to accept something so fundamental?"
Ironically, I'm pretty sure that wasn't your intent...
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
When you can't refute the science going after the reputation of the writer is almost always the next desperation move...
None of the current computer "models" are capable of taking data up to, say, 1975 and giving predictions of 1980 weather using KNOWN results as a test... OR at least no one had demonstrated that ability to date...
The "ASSUMPTIONS" included in them discount (or consider constant) the effects of H2O... known to be the most influential of "Greenhouse Gasses", ESTIMATE CO2 effects that haven't been proven, and, in many cases, are still using data sets that have proven inaccuracies (or worse yet data that can't be duplicated as it was lost, sources forgotten, or other interesting, but non scientific excuses resembling "the dog ate my homework")
Out of the 5,000 some weather stations used to measure "average temperatures" about 2/3 of them are in the most urban areas of the Northern Hemisphere... Growing nations where urban sprawl has surrounded existing "reference" sites with increasing heat sources...
I challenge the reader to find out what their nearest urban weather station adds/subtracts as a "correction factor" that supposedly accounts for the surrounding air conditioning, heating, industry, and traffic patterns... (hint: this is considered a "constant" to account for dynamic conditions, is that a problem for anyone???)
AGW may well exist in some form... but the arguments used to "prove" that it threatens the world ignore the fact that we're looking at increased crop yields with longer growing seasons, and might even get to see what the English vintages of wine taste like... Something that hasn't existed since the Medieval Warm when Roman tax records show vintners producing in their northern most territory...
Finally, for the non-scientists like myself... look at the solar output charts with a handy copy of the "Global Temperature" trends... you might observe an interesting correlation independent of ANY other factors... Something that gets less noticed than it probably ought to be...
After all, if it is all just the sun's influence and can't be affected by human efforts... how would anyone change society into their own image, gain power over people's lives, and divert billions of dollars toward the agenda of those 'believers" (had to get a disparaging word in at least once) who will determine what happens to the rest of us as a consequence of this "threat"
Don't scratch your head George. Instead think about what food will cost when gasoline is $20 per gallon and diesel fuel and fertilizer are priced accordingly. Wait, maybe I'm being too pessimistic. Let's see, in 1973 I bought gas for $0.24/gallon. Now it's about $4. OK, so that's a 1500% increase in 38 years. So in 10 years gas will be about, yep, $20/gallon. What will food cost? More than you'll be able to afford. Feeling hungry yet? Well... If we pulled our troops out of Ifuckistan, or where ever they are this month, put them to work building nuclear power plants, blanket the country with them, (Shoot any protesters on sight - marines got no beef with that.), hmmm. I reckon that food prices might stay reasonable. Might. No guarantees, but that's the only plan that makes sense to me. Hell, if we did it right, power might get cheap, then us inventors could get back to work and then put the rest of you yo-yos back to work in the factories we'd build to make our inventions.
Social Credit would solve everything...
The lovely thing about this controversy is that you DON'T have to take the word of various scientists on trust.
That's NOT how science is done. That's how religion is done.
This is Slashdot. We should ALL be perfectly capable of reading the original papers, considering the data and coming to our own decisions based on the evidence. That is what I have done.
May I encourage the rest of you to do the same?
The second that the people promoting AGW stop telling us that "GHG emissions are going COOK THE EARTH AND MUST BE STOPPED.. unless you pay us a carbon fee.. then it's all ok", stop heating their swimming pools in their mansions with the natural gas usage of several standard homes, stp jetting all over the planet to attend giant symposiums, concerts and conferences that burn more energy than a large neighborhood and generate thousands of tons of garbage, disclose the hundreds of billions of dollars they've personally profited from pushing their agenda and scuttle their "carbon trading" companies and force the Developing nations (Like China and India) to adopt the most severe aspects of change. actually fully disclose their methodologies, models and data, and create ONE.. just ONE model that can take the climatic and weather data from 1900-1950 and accurately replicate the known weather and climate from 1950-2000, and when they start promoting an outlook that tells us how to deal with the inevitable climate change rather than tell us that we can change the climate instead.. Then I'll start taking them seriously.
Since morally bankrupt failures like yourself will screw over any and everyone when it is cheaper for you to do so, we will simply make it more expensive for you to fuck over others. the more you get off on fucking over people, the more you will pay. Either you will learn how to pretend to be a respectable human being, or you will go broke.
Huh?
Even if your analysis is accurate, it doesn't mean what you think it means. Assume both sides actually believe they are right (and aren't trying to alter reality for financial gain either by selling solar panels or by selling coal). What names might you give to a proponent of the position that AGW exists and is dangerous? You might use AGW alarmist, which is a tight phrase. But you also might use AGW proponent, AGW advocate, AGW disciple, AGW etc. Basically any term that argues the for side of an argument can be used in conjecture with AGW to get a reasonable label. In a discussion which is clearly about AGW, you drop the AGW part and you get alarmist, proponent, evangelist, etc.
But, the English language does not provide the same wealth of terms for people who argue that a position is not just false, but doesn't actually exist. It's similar to how atheists get labeled as "believing in no god" (affirmation in the no god theology) when they in fact "do not believe in any gods" (rejection of all god theologies). So, what terms can you have on the negative side? AGW denialist and AGW skeptic are the only two that come to my mind which are succinct. You might call them AGW opponents, but they don't actually oppose it so much as they believe it's a hoax. You could say they are AGW hoaxists, but that's making up a word. And really, even the term "skeptic" should probably be dropped in this case, because these people don't appear to be waiting for sufficient evidence so much as simply rejecting the evidence that exists.
Maybe AGW rejectionists is better?
It is possible that it was science, and then a whole bunch of name callers joined in. That would be a historical question, which has been researched. There is a book on it (which also explains the science of the name calling), but this one hour talk sums up the history concisely.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
You forget the third potential result: if "global warming" is true but AGW is not, then we will need to take increasingly drastic action as we attempt to solve a problem by removing something that is not a causal factor. What, returning the US to pre-2000 levels of energy use and CO2 emission didn't stop the warming? Then we must reduce even more, and tax CO2 emissions even more. It isn't a case of being "a bit poorer", it a case of destroying major economic systems as unforseen consequences of increasingly strict limits overrun common sense.
I don't think this is necessary at all. You're assuming here that if we are going to battle AGW, that we're going to go all out, not stopping until we're either broke or got the whole thing under control. The science tells us that we will only see the effects of battling CO2 in 20 to 30 years. So, according to AGW, we're already late to the game and all we can do is try to make it not kill us. This means we need a healthy economy, otherwise we will not be able to do this.
And, to avoid destroying major economic systems we probably should first shoot the bankers.
I've done a meta-analysis and found that since the number of people using the word "denier" outnumbers the number of people using the word "alarmist" by a significant factor (p<0.05), the deniers must be touching a nerve, and therefore are right (p<pi/e).
That's what a "sceptic" would say. Somebody using Occam's Razor would say that the number of "deniers" is simply much smaller than the number of "alarmists", despite the claim of the "deniers".
Fandroids hate facts.
"The paper has been excoriated by climate scientists, saying the model used is 'unrealistic' and 'incorrect,' ..."
Unlike the "official" models which have accurately predicted temperature changes over the last decade... oh wait.